2011 has featured a string of hard-fought, local battles to protect poor women’s access to reproductive health care. That won’t change next year, and poor women of color will again be in the crossfire.

Quiet as it’s kept, we’re making real progress toward a just society. So next year, writes Rinku Sen, I’m keeping three imperatives: avoid triumphalism, put an explicit racial analysis front and center in national debates, and fight like hell.